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Glorelendil wrote:Sure, but those are matters of degree distinctions, not categorical. Not to be pedantic, but what about mud to your chest? Belly? Waist?

If your arms are free you can shoot at no penalty, if they aren't free, you can't shoot.

Glorelendil wrote:How about a small dog chewing on your ankle? Foot stuck in a snare?

I'd say penalties from both those would apply. Snares don't strike me as environmental per se. The idea, thematically, is that the Elf is so in-tune with nature that penalties from the natural environment don't apply. Hence the name 'One With The Wind'.

Glorelendil wrote:While I agree, you also can't keep an eye out for arrows and move the shield while also defending yourself effectively against somebody swinging an axe at you. (And, besides, with static cover you can move your body if you see an arrow coming, so it's not really all that different.) Half of shield value could be an option, but that starts to feel too fiddly, imo.

Sure, but dodging is represented by Parry, not the cover penalty. My point was that, if there's any gap in the cover, no matter how small, the elf can just shoot through it, and basically all cover has gaps. Shields, on the other hand, you can try that with, but the shield unlike the cover isn't stationary and rarely has such gaps.

It's admittedly logical either way, but I like shields being useful and don't feel like elves ignoring them quite fits thematically.

Glorelendil wrote:And, yes, I was proposing the virtue just address shields and hindrance, nothing else. That does have Synergy with Woodland Bow, for the reason Falenthal points out, but only in terms of hit probability not damage done, which I think is fine.

Yeah, I was just clarifying one of the reasons I don't like that (ie: I like it having multiple sections).

Deadmanwalking wrote: If your arms are free you can shoot at no penalty, if they aren't free, you can't shoot.

That's logical, but "arms free" isn't a condition in TOR, which means it's subject to interpretation. In fact, below you include "foot in snare" as not covered, but that leaves your arms free.

I get what you're saying...it's logical in a narrative sense. It's just poorly defined in a mechanics sense.

I'd say penalties from both those would apply. Snares don't strike me as environmental per se. The idea, thematically, is that the Elf is so in-tune with nature that penalties from the natural environment don't apply. Hence the name 'One With The Wind'.

The thematic concept is powerful, but again I just worry that it's too vague. A wolf is part of nature, right? What if it's a snare made of vines?

It's admittedly logical either way, but I like shields being useful and don't feel like elves ignoring them quite fits thematically.

I admit I don't love the shields as much as ignoring range/light/cover/obscurement, but:
a) The latter is not enough on it's own for a good Virtue, but most of the other options are so different that it risks being a hodge-podge of unrelated features.
b) Once you start ignoring cover I find it hard to argue that shields aren't cover.

Yeah, I was just clarifying one of the reasons I don't like that (ie: I like it having multiple sections).

Basic: reduce all Hindrance and range penalties by one step.
2 XP: ignore shields
1 XP: reduce Hindrance and Range by 2 steps

Glorelendil wrote:That's logical, but "arms free" isn't a condition in TOR, which means it's subject to interpretation. In fact, below you include "foot in snare" as not covered, but that leaves your arms free.

I get what you're saying...it's logical in a narrative sense. It's just poorly defined in a mechanics sense.

That's the root of the issue with clear wording as much as anything is, yeah. That said, I think the system is freeform enough to make this distinction. I mean, there are a number of mechanics already at least this ambiguous in the game. Tenacious from Men of the Lake, for example.

Glorelendil wrote:The thematic concept is powerful, but again I just worry that it's too vague. A wolf is part of nature, right? What if it's a snare made of vines?

That's why it's written as 'environmental' not 'anything natural'. Being attacked is not an environmental effect. Snares would be an LM call, but that's not necessarily a bad thing.

Glorelendil wrote:I admit I don't love the shields as much as ignoring range/light/cover/obscurement, but:
a) The latter is not enough on it's own for a good Virtue, but most of the other options are so different that it risks being a hodge-podge of unrelated features.
b) Once you start ignoring cover I find it hard to argue that shields aren't cover.

A. True. But I'm cool with them being a bit divergent. Others certainly are. Look at King's Guard from the Riders of Rohan, some of those options are mutually exclusive.

B. Shields aren't used in the same way as cover at all, they simply don't work the same. Distinguishing between them is very reasonable.

Glorelendil wrote:Basic: reduce all Hindrance and range penalties by one step.
2 XP: ignore shields
1 XP: reduce Hindrance and Range by 2 steps

That seems a little underpowered to be honest. With it just ignoring penalties and shields, it's fine without needing extra xp costs.

Deadmanwalking wrote:
A. True. But I'm cool with them being a bit divergent. Others certainly are. Look at King's Guard from the Riders of Rohan, some of those options are mutually exclusive.

Oh, I disagree! Not that they're mutually exclusive, but that there isn't a coherent theme. There is: prowess at three "pillars" of martial training. And the mutual exclusivity is a plus (from a game design perspective, if not from personal preference): it means that your hero gets better at different tasks, not just better and better at a single task, so the one virtue doesn't become a false choice (in the sense that you'd be crazy to not take all three).

Or look at Men of the Lake's "Merchant Prince": the four servants have completely different roles, but they are both mutually exclusive and tied together by a theme.

And note the clever mutual exclusivity of Hound of Mirkwood: you can teach your Hound both to harass foes and to serve as a shield to let you go Rearward, but you can't have him harass foes while you shoot arrows. So you can't use your Hound to help you fish for Wounds with your Called Shots (I suppose you could invest in Spear or Great Spear, but you'd have to start from skill: 0.)

Your proposed three aspects aren't mutually exlusive: they're all always on, nor is there a unifying theme between them other than "good with a bow". When you're using a bow you have more special purpose shots, hit more often, do more damage, and have better defenses, all at once. Individually they're perfectly fine abilities (I mean, not my first choice but there's nothing wrong with them) but it isn't clear why they would be facets of the same virtue.

That seems a little underpowered to be honest. With it just ignoring penalties and shields, it's fine without needing extra xp costs.

Eh. Depends on what you're trying to normalize to. Still better than quite a number of virtues. I'd probably still want to add one more thing that requires Hope to be spent.

Glorelendil wrote:Oh, I disagree! Not that they're mutually exclusive, but that there isn't a coherent theme. There is: prowess at three "pillars" of martial training. And the mutual exclusivity is a plus (from a game design perspective, if not from personal preference): it means that your hero gets better at different tasks, not just better and better at a single task, so the one virtue doesn't become a false choice (in the sense that you'd be crazy to not take all three).

Or look at Men of the Lake's "Merchant Prince": the four servants have completely different roles, but they are both mutually exclusive and tied together by a theme.

And note the clever mutual exclusivity of Hound of Mirkwood: you can teach your Hound both to harass foes and to serve as a shield to let you go Rearward, but you can't have him harass foes while you shoot arrows. So you can't use your Hound to help you fish for Wounds with your Called Shots (I suppose you could invest in Spear or Great Spear, but you'd have to start from skill: 0.)

Oh, I never said there wasn't a coherent theme. There absolutely is, in all of the examples you cite and I never intended to imply otherwise.

Glorelendil wrote:Your proposed three aspects aren't mutually exlusive: they're all always on, nor is there a unifying theme between them other than "good with a bow". When you're using a bow you have more special purpose shots, hit more often, do more damage, and have better defenses, all at once. Individually they're perfectly fine abilities (I mean, not my first choice but there's nothing wrong with them) but it isn't clear why they would be facets of the same virtue.

See, this is sorta where I disagree. At least half-way anyhow. I think 'good at archery' is actually a pretty solid theme to build things based on (it's certainly as coherent as King's Guard or Guard of the Tower, the only theme in those is 'good at mounted combat' and 'good at close combat' respectively). It is true that more of them being mutually exclusive might be better, though, I'll think on that and see what I come up with...

Glorelendil wrote:Eh. Depends on what you're trying to normalize to. Still better than quite a number of virtues. I'd probably still want to add one more thing that requires Hope to be spent.

That'd make it more worth the extra xp, yeah.

Glorelendil wrote:Sure, but those are matters of degree distinctions, not categorical. Not to be pedantic, but what about mud to your chest? Belly? Waist?

How about a small dog chewing on your ankle? Foot stuck in a snare?

It needs to be clearer about what category of hindrance is ignored by the ability. That needs to be sorted out. What happens if the charcater is in a troll's bear hug, in a giant snake's coils, paralysed by the spells of an undead sorcerer, in the webs of Mirkwood spiders, under the roots of a huorn, waist deep in a raging river, entranced by the gaze of a dragon, halfway up climbing a cliff, trapped under a fallen beam in a burning building...

Glorelendil wrote:While I agree, you also can't keep an eye out for arrows and move the shield while also defending yourself effectively against somebody swinging an axe at you. (And, besides, with static cover you can move your body if you see an arrow coming, so it's not really all that different.) Half of shield value could be an option, but that starts to feel too fiddly, imo.

Yes, you want a decent ability that boosts a character's ability as simply and thus efficiently as possible. If there's a table the player has to look up to see if his ability works or not, that slows the pace of combat, starts theological fights over interpretation and then boredom sets in. If boredom sets in, the game fails.

Glorelendil wrote:And, yes, I was proposing the virtue just address shields and hindrance, nothing else. That does have Synergy with Woodland Bow, for the reason Falenthal points out, but only in terms of hit probability not damage done, which I think is fine.

All this talk about probabilities and game balance is moot if it isn't going to be playtested. Have you ever playtested any of these ideas? Because it seems like its the same pet ideas endlessly circulating. Trying to perfect an abstract by second guessing it before running it in a playtest is not of much practical use.

Here's another idea: If you shoot an arrow at an enemy engaged with an ally or companion, the opponent can only defend with her or his basic parry rating. If you roll Edge, your weapon's Injury rating is increased by the amount of Parry modifier cancelled.

Insect King wrote: All this talk about probabilities and game balance is moot if it isn't going to be playtested. Have you ever playtested any of these ideas? Because it seems like its the same pet ideas endlessly circulating. Trying to perfect an abstract by second guessing it before running it in a playtest is not of much practical use.

You can't humanly playtest these sorts of things; at such low sample sizes results are far too subject to statistical variation. (As your anecdotes about your personal experience with a Mirkwood Elf illustrate.)

Instead I use computer simulations, running fights hundreds of thousands of times.

P.S. I totally called it on 'moot'.

Oh, wait...epiphany:

When you spend Hope on a ranged attack, add your basic Heart score to the attack roll. In addition, reduce all attack penalties due to range or Hindrance by one step.

FP/XP: Reduce penalties by two steps.

The first part is slightly different than in RAW but in an important way. It functions normally if you're spending Hope to invoke an Attribute, but it also kicks in if you're using Stinging Arrow. Which means if you *just* miss a shot you have an opportunity to make it both hit and be a Pierce, but with one Hope rather than two.

Insect King wrote:It needs to be clearer about what category of hindrance is ignored by the ability. That needs to be sorted out. What happens if the charcater is in a troll's bear hug, in a giant snake's coils, paralysed by the spells of an undead sorcerer, in the webs of Mirkwood spiders, under the roots of a huorn, waist deep in a raging river, entranced by the gaze of a dragon, halfway up climbing a cliff, trapped under a fallen beam in a burning building...

Hindrance is a specific game mechanical term for penalties. In all of those examples, with the exception of the raging river option and maybe being trapped in a burning building (both of which I'd allow you to shoot unhindered in) an LM should not allow the use of archery at all simply because it makes no sense for them to be able to shoot at all (indeed, in most they're either paralyzed and should thus be incapable of making actions at all on a mechanical level, or are in melee combat which flatly prohibits archery by the rules without reference to the Hindrance rules).

Insect King wrote:Yes, you want a decent ability that boosts a character's ability as simply and thus efficiently as possible. If there's a table the player has to look up to see if his ability works or not, that slows the pace of combat, starts theological fights over interpretation and then boredom sets in. If boredom sets in, the game fails.

Again, there are already mehcanics at least that ambiguous, and they rarely come up as problems IME...and frankly in the experience of others as well. I've very rarely seen Tenacious (from Men of the Lake) complained about on these forums for example.

Nevertheless, I do think I need to come up with a clearer wording there, I just think the concept I have in mind is clear enough.

Insect King wrote:All this talk about probabilities and game balance is moot if it isn't going to be playtested. Have you ever playtested any of these ideas? Because it seems like its the same pet ideas endlessly circulating. Trying to perfect an abstract by second guessing it before running it in a playtest is not of much practical use.

As Glorelendil notes, this kind of thing is probably better left to mathematical analysis than playtesting. It's different when you have a game company and can have hundreds of playtesters, but one or two playtesters are of...skewed usefulness in determining something like this.

Insect King wrote:Here's another idea: If you shoot an arrow at an enemy engaged with an ally or companion, the opponent can only defend with her or his basic parry rating. If you roll Edge, your weapon's Injury rating is increased by the amount of Parry modifier cancelled.

That's going to be most of the time, and the Injury increase is weird (since it means you're better at killing people with shields by quite a bit), and too powerful since it applies most of the time.

Glorelendil wrote:Oh, wait...epiphany:

When you spend Hope on a ranged attack, add your basic Heart score to the attack roll. In addition, reduce all attack penalties due to range or Hindrance by one step.

FP/XP: Reduce penalties by two steps.

The first part is slightly different than in RAW but in an important way. It functions normally if you're spending Hope to invoke an Attribute, but it also kicks in if you're using Stinging Arrow. Which means if you *just* miss a shot you have an opportunity to make it both hit and be a Pierce, but with one Hope rather than two.

That still seems a bit weak. And much weaker to the point of being no meaningfully better than the base version for Elves of Lorien (who lack Wood Elf Magic). I'd be okay with it being a bit better for Elves of Mirkwood, since their weapon choice is weaker, but it still needs to be worth it for the guy from Lorien.

I think maybe you are just looking for something far more powerful than I am. I'm trying to keep it "average", and especially trying to avoid making it a must-have option. Archers should feel like the can take The Speakers or Elvish Dreams and not making a "bad" character.

That said, it's actually pretty potent. Because of the probabilities inherent in multi-dice rolls, narrow misses are common than larger misses. Also, although a bow has a 1/6 chance of rolling Edge, that's an average of misses and hits. A miss is less likely to make Edge than a hit is. So turning a narrow miss into a Pierce is actually pretty nifty.

If I were building a melf archer I'd take it.